FIR 159: High Impact AI RESULTS For Your Business, Now!

FIR 159: High Impact AI RESULTS For Your Business, Now!

What are the main challenges that I need to solve as a company trying to apply AI to help my business? In this episode, I have a conversation with an organization that provides an AI platform to help you overcome those.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. This is Grant Larsen. And today I have someone that I bumped into the not too long ago, I was at a conference and literally went to their booth and said, Oh, I want to learn more about this technology. I've been tracking your team, your organization, so it's my chance to learn more about it. And so I got to meet a Atalia Horenshtien I hope I said that right. I'm so excited to have Atalia here with me today. So first of all, "A" welcome I tell you and "B" did I say your name right? And then "C" the first question out of the box, explain the meaning behind your name.

Atalia
Thank you so much for having me. And you actually pronounced the name correctly. So kudos to your best. The meaning behind my name. So first of all, thanks to my parents for choosing such a unique name. It's actually a Hebrew name. I'm originally from, from Israel. And I totally I need Hebrew pronouncing it as a Talia is actually the first claim in Judaism kingdom. So it's a name from the Bible. And it's actually very unique even in Israel. Very cool.

Grant
Really. The queen in the Bible, I'm gonna have to go look that up. That's awesome. You should. That's very cool. Do we? Do we bow in your presence? Then? Do we do anything like that? Do we do we say Hey, this is me?

Atalia
No, no, no, no, not not at all.

Grant
Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time here today. Now as I understand that, I want to make sure I get this right. Your title in your organization is Global Technology Product Advocacy Lead, I actually had to write that down because I can only remember three things. And that's five words in a title, Global Technology Product Advocacy Lead for DataRobot. Did I get that? Right?

Atalia
Yeah, that's actually correct.

Grant
What do you do in that role?

Atalia
So we did a robot. I started as a customer facing data scientist, where I work with customers in different industries, and helping them how to solve complex AI and machine learning problems. And learning from this role, and those use cases. I shifted a bit towards to the advocacy side. So how we tell the technical story of DataRobot, how we educate the market about what's possible. Some of the use cases I implement, and some of the stuff I saw was working on collaboration with our marketing sales. And our customers as well.

Grant
Okay, got it. So that global part, I think, is critical, because I'm assuming that you go across multiple markets, you're not focused on any one. I gotta believe that gives you a sort of broader industry cross industry view on on AI and machine learning. Is that correct?

Atalia
Yeah, so I was very lucky to work with different industries in different geographical locations. And obviously, I see a lot of different trends and maturity around AI, where they are in the stage, how are they adopting? What's the process? There, technical knowledge, their technical stage? Yeah. So from United States to Europe to the Middle East. It's really, really interesting. And I'm very happy that I have the opportunity to do so.

Grant
So that's awesome. What know what got you into this world? What got you into AI and machine learning?

Atalia
Actually, it's a really interesting path because I started actually the software engineer Not not a, as a data scientist, and over time, obviously the software engineer you work with, with software development, system design, etc, some stuff that you see today in in machine learning operations. And then when I did my masters, I was mostly specific around business intelligence and machine learning. And I learned a lot, it was super interesting. So I took my software skills into a different level. And it's a funny story, because a professor of mine is actually working for DataRobot. And he's one of the main reasons I'm here.

Grant
Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. So was the professor already at DataRobot when you were like, Okay, got it. Got it?

Atalia
Yep, he's still here. His name is Ted Kotler is a world class Person, both on the personality side, and he's a technical knowledge. So I'm very fortunate to work with great people in the company.

Grant
That's fascinating. I have a similar journey myself, meaning I too, came through the software engineering path, and then sort of stumbled into  through a whole range of things into the whole data science and ML/AI space. So a lot of people certainly do that. But it's sort of a shift in the thinking, isn't it the first time you come into the ML thinking, you're thinking about your data in a much different way. And algorithms and such you're like, wait, okay, I'm solving it. So much different. But I thoroughly enjoy that. All right. So I want to get to some of the things that are unique to, to DataRobot itself. I've worked with multiple AI and ML platforms. And as I mentioned in the intro, I had been watching and looking at DataRobot, watching your organization over time, take on more and more capabilities. When I when you demonstrated the latest capabilities and gave me a sense of where things are going. It started me thinking, what are the main challenges when you think about the AI and ML world? And the problems that are in this space? What are the main challenges that we face? And ultimately, I want to get to what is it that differentiates the way DataRobot does it in the market? But could you first start with what are some of the main challenges you see today, especially with your global perspective, in the AI space?

Atalia
Yeah. So I think the main main challenge today around the machine learning lifecycle is how you move models into productions and how you make sure your models are still accountable, and accurate with all the factors and new reality that is coming up, right. And get this today, everyone can just build psyche learn model or simple, you know, regression model. But when you work as an organization, and you have different infrastructures, different tools, different skill sets, different personas within your team, and you localize the development side of it, and every model has completely different requirements. So you're getting to inefficient lifecycle. So moving a model from development phase to production is a process that takes usually a lot of time, and it can be super complex. So something that I personally like about there rather than this is something I learned from customers, right that this is the biggest pain today is having an ability to have a platform that will be interoperable and flexible around how to support models that were created in variety of environments and languages, but also how to serve and manage and monitor models that were deployed to different endpoints necessarily to data on production server.

Grant
So sorry, just interrupt there. That was one of the things when you showed me I was fascinated with which was this ability to bring in models produced from a wide range of platforms and tool sets, if you will, and still bring them into the management aspect that I thought that was a critical characteristic around DataRobot itself. So when when you do that work, when you bring those models in and you manage those, what is it that that you're doing that makes that easier? A it's a it's helpful for me to have one place to bring those together but be what value then does that help me with as I tried to, to update those and refactor those moving forward?

Atalia
So it includes several other aspects. So first of all, as you mentioned, you have a single place where you can see all your models regardless where they've been created and regardless of the word have been deployed to. So like single pane of glass where you can see everything and, and being able to see at a glance which models are stale, which eventually preventing any risk to your business. Because it's not just about having the visibility to those models. It's also the ability to manage, monitor and govern them. So what is the service health status of this model from the the all endpoints, and what's the accuracy of the model, how it's changed over time, maybe some features that have been drifted. When you see those aspects, it's really helpful for you to understand, maybe you need to retrain your existence project, maybe you need to swipe your existence model with any challenger model, something that is performing better now with the new data that is coming up. Think about COVID That can be a really great example, right? When you train models on certain data set, but then all the reality has changed. All the products you did at that time are irrelevant today with the existence data.

Grant
Okay, yeah. And this this ability to see the either the drip, like you said, or the staleness of that that's such a critical capability. Is that is that a visual thing? Is it notification based? And how is it that you're being made aware of this?

Atalia
So it's definitely a visual thing. So you have an ability to see on a specific time when something happened, but you know, we're not expecting from people to go in consistently checking the platform, you can automate the whole process with notifications, if you want to get notified that, let's s

FIR 158: Using AI In Your Product Delivery To Leap Ahead !!

In this episode, I talk with the CEO and founder of an organization that has been applying AI to help them develop products. Will AI help you develop your products faster? Come and see.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have this opportunity to speak with one of those brains out there in the market that's being disruptive, right? They're making changes in the industry in terms of not only the problems are solving, but it's the way in which they're solving the problems using AI very fascinating. Anyway, everyone, please welcome Paul Ortchanian here to the show.

Paul
Hi, nice. Nice, nice of you, happy to be here on the show. 

Grant
Absolutely. It's very good to have you here today. When I was first introduced to you. And I started to review your material what it is that your organization has put together as fascinated with the approach because I have a product development background and in in the software world. AI was late comer to that right meaning over generations when I saw the approach that you're taking to that I'm interested to dig more into that. But before we do that big reveal, could you maybe step back and talk about the beginning your journey? What got you on this route? And this map, both in terms of product development, and technology and AI itself?

Paul
Yeah, absolutely. So I started out as an engineer, headed down to San Francisco in the early 2000s. And, and I was more of a thinker than an actual engineer, or just be the type of guy who would figure things out by themselves. But if you were to ask me to really do things that the real things engineers do, you know, creativity was there, but not the solutioning. So being in San Francisco was a humbling experience, I guess, Silicon Valley, you get to see some really, really good engineers. So I had to make a shift in my career. And since I had a passion for user experience, the business aspect, product management was a great fit a function I didn't really understand. And I got to learn and respect, and did that for about 10 years. 

In the mid 2000s, and 10s, I basically moved back to Montreal for family reasons and cost of living, of course in San Francisco. And I started a company called Bank Biddick, which in French stands for public bath. And the idea is that most what I realized in Canada was that people here in accelerators, incubators and, and startups just didn't understand what product management was. So they didn't really understand what they do and how they do it. And I saw a lot of organizations being led by the marketing teams, or the sales team and being very service oriented and not really product LED. 

So basically, it basically stands for public bath, which means every quarter, you want to basically apply some hygiene to your roadmap, you have a galaxy of ideas, why not go out there and just, you know, take the good ones and remove the old ones and get rid of the dirt. And we started with that premise. And we put we said, well, what does a product manager do on a on a quarterly basis? Because a lot of the material you'll read out there really talks about, you know what product managers should do in terms of personas and understanding the customer's data and this and that, but nobody really tells you which order you should do it. Right. If that was my initial struggle as a product manager, do you try to do it all in the same day and then you realize that there's not enough time? So the question is like in a one quarter 12 week cycle, as my first three weeks should be about understanding the market shifts the industry, the product competitors and and the users and then maybe in the next three weeks working with leadership on making sure that there is no pivots in the organization or there are some some major strategic changes and then going into analyzing the DIS parking lot of ideas and figuring out which ones are short term and re and making business cases in order to present them for, for the company to make a decision on What to do next on the roadmap. 

So there is a process and we just call that process SOAP, which goes in line with our public bath theme. So the idea was like, let's let's give product managers SOAP to basically wash their roadmap on a quarterly basis. And, and that's what being public does. And we work with over 40 organizations today so far, on really implementing this product LEDs process within their organizations, we work with their leaders on identifying a product manager within the organization and making sure that marketing support sales, the CFO CEO really understand how to engage with them what to expect from them, and how product manager can add value to to the organization. And so they just doesn't become, you know, this grace towards them as many features as you can pump out, right.

Grant
Oh, boy, yeah. Which, which is constant problem. The other thing that I've noticed, and I'm wondering if, and I'm sure that your SOAP methodology addresses this, it's the problem of shifting an organization in terams of their funding model, right? They'll come from sort of these project centric or service centric funding styles, and then you've got to help them through that shift to a different funding model round products. You guys address that as well.

Paul
Yeah, we address that a lot. One of the things we always tell them is if you are a service professional services firm, and you know, I have no issues basically calling them that. If and I asked them like do you quantify staff utilization in percentages, like 70% of our engineers are being billed? Right? Do we basically look at the sales team? How many new deals do they have in terms of pipeline? Are we looking at on time delivery across those, so double use that to serve the sales team closed? And what is our time and technical staff attrition, that usually tends to be identifiers of you being a service firm? And we often ask them, well, let's let's make the shift, when we identify one little initiative that you have that you want to productize because they all these service firms, really all they want is recurring revenue, then the service is tough, right? 

That you constantly have to bring in new clients. So this recurring revenue, the path to recurring revenue is, you know, being able to say, Okay, I'm going to take two engineers, one sales person, one marketing person, one support person, and a product manager. And those guys collectively will cost me a million dollars a year, and I'm going to expect them to basically bring me $3 million in recurring revenue. That means that they're, they're no longer going to be evaluated on staff utilization, they're no longer going to be evaluating the number of deals they're bringing in. And they're, they're really going to be evaluated on how are they releasing features? Are they creating value for those features? are we increasing the number of paid customers? And are we basically, you know, staying abreast in terms of competitors and market industry changes. 

And so that's a complete paradigm shift. And that transition takes a while. But the first seed is really being able to say, can you create an entity within your organization where the CFO accepts that those engineers are dedicated and no longer being, you know, reviewed in terms of their utilization rate in terms of their know how much they're billing to customers? Once they do that shift in the recipe is pretty easy to do.

Grant
Yeah. So it's become easy. So the thing to I've seen and experienced with, with product and product development is the relationship of innovation to product development. And so I see some groups will take innovation, and they'll move that as some separate activity or function in the organization, whereas others will have that innate within the product team itself. What have you found effective? And does self addressed that?

Paul
Yeah, I mean, we always ask them the question of what how are you going to defend yourself against the competition with the VCs that have to call their moat, right? And that defensibility could be innovation, it could also be your global footprint, or, you know, it could be how you operationalize your supply chain make things really, really cheap, right? Every company can have a different strategy. And we really ask them from the get go. We call this playing the strategy, we'll give them like eight potential ways a company can, you know, find strategies to differentiate themselves? And the first one is first the market? 

And the question is, it's not about you being first to market today. But do you want to outpace your curlier closest rivals on a regular basis? And if so, you know, you need an r&d team and innovation team who is basically going to be pumping out commercializable features or r&d work. And then we always give him the two examples, the example of Dolby Dolby being completely analog in the 70s, but really banking on their r&d team to bring him to the digital age and from the digital age to set top boxes to Hollywood and now into Netflix compression, right? 

So they basically put their R&D team as the leader to basically keep them a step ahead of their competition. But it but on the other hand, we also Welcome, you know, talk about Tesla, where Tesla is basically doing the same thing, but they're not doing it for intellectual property like Dolby, they're not suing anybody are actually open sourcing it. But there's a reason behind it where that open sourcing allows them to basically create the, you know, what we call the Betamax VHS issue, which is making sure that there's compatibility across car manufacturers for Tesla parts and overproduction of parts that are Tesla just to increase their supply chain, right? So we ask them, Do you want to be that company, if you don't want to be that company,

FIR 157: How to Be an Entrepreneur AND Hold a Full-Time Job!

In this episode I talk with Dr. Pranay Parikh, where we look at the question, how can you do your full time job while being an entrepreneur to fill the gaps that are missing in your life?

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So today I have this opportunity. It's taken us a few times for me to chase him down. He's very busy. Dr. Pranay Parikh. I'm excited to talk with him when I when I first saw the profile on him and realize the journey that he both has done and the one that he's on and his vision of that I got to talk to this gentleman. I'm gonna read his the little clip that I got before even let him say a word. I just want you to hear a little bit about him. Alright, here we go. Okay, hold on. Here we go. It's Dr. Pranay. Parikh is a physician co founder and president of ascent equity group, a serial entrepreneur, we're going to want to ask him about that. Okay, online course creator and host of the MD to entrepreneur podcast, which is really cool. Continuing on his unconventional journey, and I add it is which is what makes us really cool. His unconventional journey to medicine helped him learn the skills to excel in entrepreneurship. He's launched a seven figure online course. And he's bought over $1.1 billion in real estate. Wow. And he's helped hundreds of physicians launch their own businesses. His goal is to help launch 10,000 physician led businesses. That's amazing. So I want to welcome here to the show. Dr. Pranay Parikh. Welcome.

Pranay
Thanks, Grant. I'm super excited to talk.

Grant
It's so good to have you here. Now, we were both talking before we got started. We're both in the southwest part of the country. We sort of enjoy that. In fact, I think you and I might have even had our earlier grown up years in the Northern California area. So we got a lot in similar but the key difference is, I am definitely not a doctor. You know, I went bought band aids last night. And it took me awhile just to figure that out. So I'm more of a tech and investing guy. But I am not a doctor guy. But I'm excited to talk to you about this and your journey. So thanks again for being here.

Pranay
Yeah, super excited to talk to you and your audience. 

Grant
Okay, now something happened, right? You were growing up and you said, hey, I want to be a doctor and you got moving down that path. But somewhere along that line, well, first of all, what kind of medicine? Have you been practicing?

Pranay
So I did a residency in Internal Medicine, and I practice hospitalist medicines. So that means if you ever have to spend a night in the hospital, then I'd be your doctor.

Grant
Okay. Is that is that the same as as an internist? Is that? Is that what that is? 

Pranay
Yeah, so it's the same residency, but usually what internists do they do outpatient medicine, so you know, your primary care doctor, they do some inpatient, but I'm kind of sub specialized. I only see people in the hospital, the hospital itself. 

Grant
Okay, got it. Very good. All right. So you were on that journey doing that work. And something happened somewhere along the line, you sort of sat up and said, I need to add something, either to my life or my purpose or my vision on top of this medical route. Tell me about that. What happened?

Pranay
You know, so it's kind of funny. So to get into medical school, you have to be well rounded, right? You have to be doing all this other cool stuff, right? You can't just be a nerdy like I was really good at Sciences and maths and all that stuff. They want someone you know, reads a lot of the books and does all this stuff. But after you get in all that stuff gets taken away gets subtracted. And it kind of sucks for people like me that like doing a lot of other stuff, but you're so busy in medicine, doing your job learning that there's not much else you can do. So as soon as I got an opportunity to start doing other stuff I did. So for example, in medical school, I used to hold art shows. And then the money that we grades go to the doctors without borders, I was always trying to do stuff that was, you know, a little bit outside the box. So as soon as I graduated finished everything, I was like, okay, what can I do? What? Where can I go and all this stuff that's been suppressed for so long.

Grant
That's amazing. You talked about Doctors Without Borders, I have a friend just Sunday night I was talking with he, he spent a number of years I think went five times down to Central America, they were taking both dental as well as medical help and support into some of those areas there. It's fun to hear the service and the blessing that that is to people that are missing those things. So you did these art shows that was providing support to them. That's a cool thing. So it sounds like there was either there's altruistic thing that you needed to get filled in your life, right? I mean, something to reach out further, in addition to the work you're doing that led you to doing this kind of work. Now, there's that what led you at some point to say, I'm going to build sort of a business or be an entrepreneur on it is that what led you down that path?

Pranay
Still, so you know, when I when I looked at the landscape after being graduated, you know, at a pretty decent salary, but I realized the most important thing is what I do with that money, not how much I can make, you know, I could have just gone and bought a car or bought a house. And I'd be, you know, I wouldn't have a ton of money to consider for my future, right. So I decided to rent a little bit longer, keep driving my Honda Accord, which actually still have 2012. So you know, it's what I do with the money. So you know, I did the stock market, but in this world, people that are most well off and buy well off, you know, I don't care about the total number that's in my bank account, I care about freedom, I care about providing for my family, and I care about providing for my extended family. So the people that I've seen that been have been able to do that are the people in business, business and real estate. So I thought how, how can I incorporate one or, you know, fortunately, now, both of those into my life? And what's the quickest way to do that?

Grant
Okay, excellent. So you have a broader vision about, I want to make a difference, right? I want to help someone in the world, what not just my own family, but but the people within my reach that I can access or get out to? Is that right?

Pranay
Yeah. And as a doctor, it was great. Because I there's a lot of job satisfaction and being able to help people. But I was limited by time. And that's, that's one of the big issues that I had, I wanted to create this impact. I wanted to help as many people as possible, but there was only one of me, right? So if I'm not at the hospital, I'm not helping people. So how do I take that impact that I want and spread it to, really the whole world, and the what I thought was, if I can help other people, after I got my business up and running, I can help other people get their business up and running. And if they're able to either find financial security and be happier doctors, you know, you might have heard of this epidemic of a burnout, that's just been an issue. And a lot of that is not being able to pick your own hours and being forced to do things that you don't necessarily want to do a lot of administrative work. And if you're able to take control of your life, then those happy doctors are making a bigger impact. And that's something that I can, I can help people do as well.

Grant
So you're going after this audience of people that have proven that they have the ability to be disciplined to dedicate their time and their resources, their energy, not just to not just to their practice in their craft, right around medicine, but but now to take that and apply it to businesses. And those businesses the purpose of those sounds like have twofold one is to provide an outlet for them sort of emotionally, right where they can get outside and, and maybe really, you know, benefit their own family but also to use their businesses away then to further their reach to help people when they're away from practicing their medicine. Did I get that? Right?

Pranay
Correct. Correct. And you'd be surprised how often someone comes up to me and says, Hey, Pranay, I'm just a doctor. You think I could start a business? And it's funny because you have to get to get into medical school or, you know, dentistry lawyers, and I'm just talking about medical school because that's what I've been through. But you know, any professional degree, you've gone through a lot. You've studied, you've been taking all these tests and you've really stood the test of time. So you can pick up a lot of these other things pretty easily, you know, a little bit of trial and error. So a lot of it is just showing people that they have this innate ability. And a lot of times in medicine, we're taught not to try something, unless we have 100% chance of success.

Grant
It's interesting is about a year ago, I was running a class for a group of people on starting your own business. And, and one of the people that came into that class was an oral surgeon, and doing doing just great, you know, in terms of financial, right. And I said to him, why, why did you take this right to mean, you certainly don't. Okay. I mean, and he said, well, the, the one area that he felt like he was running into that it was creating a challenge for him was that, while he had figured out and was successful at the procedures, at some point in the career, those procedures became procedural. In other words, I was just doing I'm quoting him, I was just doing and still doing the same thing every day. And what I found that I

FIR 156: Real Estate Returns Too Good To Be True? The Land Geek...

Today I had the opportunity to speak with "The Land Geek". Fascinating conversation. He's got over, well over four and a half million downloads on his podcast. He's got some interesting ideas and insights on investing with land that the returns higher than normal, I guess normal, what's normal, higher than, you know, eight 10% return, if you will, returns on these investments. So I'm very excited to have Mark here with me today. Thanks for joining us, we learn the secrets from the land geek.

Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So I have been chasing this person for some time. He is super busy and has an amazing profile. I hope you take the opportunity to look into what he's done. We're going to be having conversation today with Mark, Oh man, Mark. I didn't even ask at a time. Podolski!

Mark
Perfect pronunciation.

Grant
Did I say that? Okay. All right. Very good. Mark. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. I appreciate it.

Mark
Grant Larsen, an honor. Privilege. Thank you.

Grant
You know, we found out that we are not too far from each other geographically, which is a real treat. There's some neat, neat things about the part of the country we live in for sure.

Mark
Absolutely. We've lost our complaining privileges living in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Grant
That's right. That's right. That's right. Even when it gets a little hot. I've learned to quit Quit complaining about it's not a Houston hot right.

Mark
Houston hot. It's 80 degrees in the pool. 

Grant
Yeah, that's. That's right. It's fixable with the pool. That's right, right. Okay, so the land geek, you are known as the land geek, you've done a great job getting your name out there as land geek, not only getting your name out there, but proving a framework. But we'll get to the framework here in a moment. Because what you've done is pretty unique compared to other real estate investing strategies that are out there, of which I actually participate in some of those others, right, but I won't get to that yet. So I'm interested to learn more about what you do here. But let's back up. You were doing what what got you started to say I'm gonna go after land investments in this way.

Mark
So if we rewind the tape now, to 2000 I was a miserable micromanaged. 45 minute commute to work and back investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions with private equity groups. And grant it got so bad for me. I wouldn't get the Sunday blues, anticipating Monday coming around. I'd get the Friday blues, anticipating the weekend going by really fast. And having to be back at work. On Monday. I was pretty much yeah, really blue. So I first hired this guy, and he's telling me that as a side hustle, he's going to tax deed auctions. He's buying raw land, pennies on the dollar. He's flipping them online, and he's making a 300% return on his money. Grant. I'm looking at companies all day long. And a great company great has 15% EBIT on margins are free cash flow, average company's 10%. And I'm looking at companies all day long, less than 10%. So of course, I don't believe them. And I've got three grand saved up for car repairs. I go to New Mexico with them. I do exactly what he tells me to do. I buy 10 Half Acre parcels and average price of $300 each. I flipped them online. And they all sell for an average price of $1,200 each. It worked. So I went to another auction and in Arizona, where we live. And again, this is 2000 There's no one in the room. I'm buying up lots of acreage or nothing. And I sell all that property. You know that what auction I made over $90,000 So I go to my wife. She's pregnant at the time. I said Honey, I'm going to quit My job and become a full time lead investor. And she said, Absolutely not. Yeah.

Grant
What do you say? And what are you doing on?

Mark
Yeah. So it took 18 months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income. And then I quit. I've been doing it full time ever since. And I absolutely love it.

Grant
That's incredible. So you just sort of stumbled into it, someone happened to say, they'd already sort of figured this out. Now, it sounds like what you did with that is after you've done this for a while, you've created a system out of this, then is that right?

Mark
Yeah, I mean, after a while, you start picking up things, and you start seeing, okay, well, how do I make this job, myself. And, really, my whole philosophy is, I can always make more money, I can't get more time. And so we want to use three levers to scale and grow a business, other people's time, software and automation, and other people's money. And so once I combined all three of those, I was really able to grow and work really about 30 minutes a week, in my business.

Grant
What, 30 minutes, you're at a point now where you work 30 minutes a week on your business? In the business? Yeah, that's amazing. Wow. But it took that scaling, right, took that automation to figure it out the team around you to help take care of certain aspects of it took all of those pieces, as well as other people's money. That's interesting. That took five years. Oh, that was gonna ask you so five years to get to that point, learn the lessons, learn the business processes that you should automate, and so forth. Right?

Mark
Well, five years just to start getting myself out of business, probably another five years, to get to my point where I can work 30 minutes, 30 minutes in the business, rarely, I'm just meeting with my Acquisition Manager. And we're looking at the numbers and saying how many deals are pending? How many offers went out? How many deals will be closed? How can I support you?

Grant
So when it comes to finding these opportunities is the auctions is that your main input, or source or how well find these.

Mark
So Grant, I'm going to walk you exactly through how I do it. So you live, I'm gonna use these as a case study. You're in Scottsdale, Arizona, but let's assume that you own five acres of raw land in Texas, and you owe $200 in back taxes. So essentially, you're advertising two important things. 

Number one, you have no emotional attachment to the raw land, you're in Arizona, the properties and taxes in Texas. 

And number two, you're distressed financially in some weird way. Because we don't pay for things like our property taxes, we don't value them in the same way. As resolved, county treasurer, keeps sending me notices saying, Grant, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're going to lose that five acre parcel, tax deed or tax lien investor. So all I'm gonna do is look at the comparable sales on your five acre parcel for the last 12 to 18 months, I'm gonna take the lowest comparable sale, let's say $10,000 and divide by four. And that's gonna give you a Warren Buffett would call a 300% margin of safety. So I'm gonna send you an actual offer on your five acre parcel for $2,500. Now you accept it. Why? Because for you $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, three to 5% of people accept my quote unquote, top dollar offer. But now that you've accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in depth research. I have to confirm you still own the property. I have to confirm back taxes are only $200 I have to make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title. There's no liens or encumbrances. And because it's only $2,500 investment, I outsourced to my team in the Philippines, connected to an American Title Company. It cost about $11. I was investing $5,000 or more, I wouldn't take any title risk. 

You have to close traditionally through a title company. But since this is a smaller deal, everything checks out. And now I'm going to sell your five acre parcel 30 days or less and make a cash flow. So I have a built in best buyer grant. Do you know who it is? Who is the neighbors, the neighbors? So I'm going to send out neighbor letters saying hey, here's your opportunity. Protect your privacy. Protect your views. Know your neighbor. So oftentimes the neighbors will buy now if the neighbors pass a gun to my buyers list, if they pass. A good little website you may have heard of, it's called Craigslist is the 15th most trafficked website United States. I'll go to one I know you've heard of called meta, or Facebook, buy sell groups in the marketplace, and then I'll go to the lands land moto.com lands of america.com land and farm.com land flip.com Land hub.com These are platforms where people buy and sell raw land. But the way that I'm going to do it is the secret. I'm going to make it irresistible for my next buyer. All I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 downpayment, to control this five acre parcel, and then I'll make it a car payment, let's say 297 a month, for the next 84 months at 9% interest. So it's a one time sale, I'll get my money out on the down payment. I could go six to 10 months out. And now I'm getting a passive income of 297 a month, next 84 months. No renters. No rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And because I'm not dealing with a tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd Frank RESPA. And the SAFE Act, all this owners real estate legislation. So grant, it's a simple game, can I create enough land notes where my passive income exceeds my fixed expenses? And now working? 

Grant
Because I want to not because I have to guess you have to? So on those numbers, then Mark, when you look at that, and what's the percentage of those that carry all the way through, you know, you're obviously I love, I love how you have the profile for that best buyer, how you create that, that passive income, what sort of risks does that put on your shoulders, where there's potential for them not following through on the cash flow, any issues there?

Mark
We don't mind it, because we u

FIR 155: Invest Like The Wealthy To Change Your Life

In this episode, I have the opportunity to talk with a self made entrepreneur who's followed the footsteps of her amazing dad, and in the journey has discovered what the tips are that the wealthy use to invest to change your life.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So I have been trying to track down this person multiple times and admitted it was my fault. I could not get my calendar right to meet with Stephanie Walter. So glad to have her here with me today. I'm fascinated with her background, what she's done in terms of growing wealth. But before I go any further, Stephanie, welcome.

Stephanie
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. 

Grant
Yes, this is fun to have you here. Your journey is a fascinating one to me, because it's this journey as I reviewed it, of gathering some financial capabilities, but then not resting on that, but rather using it to leverage for future wealth. So I don't want to give that away because I want I want our listeners to hear this cool journey that you've gone on. But let's rewind. Okay, let's uh, we won't go back to where you were raised as a kid. But let's go back to you get out of school, and you're thinking I'm gonna go do some work. And that led you down a certain path? Would you talk about that? Yeah, I did what like most people do, I got it. I just got a regular job with a corporation.

Stephanie
I had some interest in insurance. So I became a claims adjuster. And, and I sort of moved up the ranks pretty pretty quickly to where I was working kind of as a liaison between the attorneys in that represented the insurance companies and, and the insurance company. So that was, that was really interesting, but just, you know, working in a corporate setting, I remember that, you know, my pivotal point was I was getting a 2% Raise after my superiors had said, what a fantastic job I was. You're welcome all 2% Did you get to keep all that 2%? Or did you know you got to keep? 

Grant
That's impressive. Yeah.

Stephanie
And I went home to my Dad, I just bought a house and was like, Dad, I just, you know, look at how much gets taken out. But with taxes, it was a big learning experience. I mean, well, as you know, I did put, you know, seven years into it, but just realize that, you know, if I'm making these 2% races for the rest of my life, you know, what is that going to look like? And my dad was an entrepreneur, actually, he's a second generation entrepreneur. And he's like, Well, you know, what you're gonna get if you stay in this, but if you go out on your own, you know, really what you build will be up to you. And it's your choice to do what you want to do. And I gave my my two week notice probably the next day, did you really? Oh, wow. That's okay. Wow, a woman a decision and action. That's awesome.

Grant
So, all right, so you gave you gave the two week notice you left, and then you didn't go to the pool? That's for sure. What did you go though?

Stephanie
Well, I have a I have a lot of relatives and insurance. And that's kind of how I started in doing in claims to begin with. And so I just knew, you know, the company I was really familiar with, went and signed up with them, took all the classes to become an agent and and just, you know, started started working, you know, right off the bat, state and insurance agent for about 16 years. 

See, I started that I'm trying to think of like timeframes, I think it was 2004. And then right around that same time, I kind of decided, you know, with the when the bottom fell out to buy some real estate, single family homes, right in an area in Denver, I'm a native, as I mentioned, where I felt like if there would be growth, from Denver that, you know, over time, these would probably be good, good investments to have. And that was in the Sloan's Lake area if people are familiar. And so I became, you know, a untrained landlord, as well as a business owner at the same time, all in one shot. So quick question. So when you did this transition out of the corporate world, into the entrepreneur going to do myself.

Grant
How many entrepreneur books did you read before you got started?

Stephanie
You know, I? I didn't read that many. 

Grant
Yeah, that's like I could tell you just jumped in and went after it. Right? You got going on.

Stephanie
I think also my my step up in that area was I'd see my dad growing up who had never, who had always had businesses and so to I never saw him work a nine to five job, you know, have a two week vacation or anything like that. So I had a very good example of what an entrepreneur looks like. And so that's probably why I didn't need to read books. I have since read a lot of books. 

Grant
But yeah, yeah. But you had a role model, you had a mentor to follow after. Alright, so you go through this journey, you run your real, or excuse me, your insurance agency for 16 years. What happened?

Stephanie
I mean, as time went on, there was you know, also some distaff dissatisfaction. Because you, you know, you really like your clients, and they're doing business because of you. But then there's this big, you know, corporation behind you, mine was Farmers Insurance, who, you know, ultimately makes the decisions based on, you know, the claims and the the rate changes and things like that. So that became kind of frustrating. But then also, you know, again, my dad was, you know, pretty. He passed away, actually, shortly after I started my agency, but I'm sorry, yeah, thank you. But I had, I remembered a lot of things as time went on. I was like, Oh, I remember when Dad said that. And one of the things he always said was, don't put all your eggs in one basket. And that was for me, that meant just, you know, don't continue, farmers was very big on, take a loan out, to keep running your visit business, make it bigger, make it better, all these things, where I just sort of directed my money in my growth into real estate, because I felt like it wasn't so attached to to the business. And I loved real estate. I didn't know much about it. I certainly wasn't very educated about it.

Oh, I think it was 2016 I had gotten an invitation to a boot camp and about buying apartments, which I had always been curious about, oh, cool. Went into there. And that's where I first heard the term syndication. And I was I was just blown away, I'd never heard that I loved the idea of a group of people buying something that no one could do on their own. And I from that point on, I was all in there. I did about three years thing me maybe it was only No, I think it was only two years of education, which, you know, was an investment, but you come out of that bait being able to be very knowledgeable about commercial real estate, which is very different than residential real estate residential. 

Grant
So if I hear you, right, I think you said that this transition to real estate, it was a diversification strategy for you following your dad's counsel, right not to have all your eggs in one basket. You still had the insurance company at least for a while, right? And then then you started investing in the real estate, is that right? 

Stephanie
Yeah. i And well, I had all I had invested, you know, in the single family homes and they're, you know, through the last crash and then wanted to do the apartments and then in 2016, that really was probably, I mean, I kept running my agency obviously, until actually last year when I Um, my investing had my income from investing had exceeded my, my business income. So I was able to retire, or in my case, just do do a different career for a while.

Grant
I love that when I saw that in your profile, I thought that was the ultimate, which was to sort of break away. It's that, hey, I'm no longer just going to be a business sort of operator, right? I'm actually going to step aside and let let your income or your assets generate that income for you, right. It's the money's working for you. And I saw that in your notes too, which was a, you said some interesting about the way the wealthy do it, which is the wealthy have their money working for them? Was that always at the forefront of your mind? Or did you sort of discover that along the way? 

Stephanie
No, that's a that's a big, I think it was big, the aha moment for me. And how I describe it is that I believe most people, and I was one of those most people believed in an accumulation model of money, which meant for most people is I'm going to accumulate the money in my 401k. I never really, you know, went down that path from owning my own business, I wanted to accumulate my money in real estate. But yet my idea was the same, which is I'm going to buy this property and manage it for 30 years until the loan is paid off. And then I will live off of the rents or whatever at that time. But when I started raising money for the syndications, I started becoming friends and, you know, meeting really, very interesting, you know, wealthy people, and just notice that they were doing stuff differently than than I was, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But after a while of working with them, I realized that they look at their money as a good word is utilization. They're always using their money. They're using their money to give them cash flow. And there was kind of the light bulb that came on for me. Later on. You know, I started doing syndications in 2018, and I think it was the end of 2019 that I started to sell my properties one by one, and invest them in syndications. Because I realized I had these this great big chunk just sitting in and it's really not doing much as far as you know, cash flow, helping me out at all. Whereas, you know, if I just shifted my focus and where I put my money, the ret